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Spanish Onions with Kidney

A stew of onions stuffed with kidneys, bread crumbs, and seasonings, braised in gravy and red wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Spanish Onions with Kidney

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the onions and scoop out the inside, leaving ½ inch at the bottom.

  2. Season the onions with pepper, salt, chopped bay leaf, and thyme.

  3. Cut the kidneys in half lengthwise, remove the skin and core, and season them similarly.

  4. Stuff each onion with two kidneys and a mixture of the scooped-out onion, bread crumbs, pepper, salt, parsley, and egg yolk.

Braise

  1. Place the stuffed onions in a stewpan with a little butter and add chopped bacon and any leftover onion core.

  2. Cover with buttered paper and fry for 15 minutes with the cover off.

  3. Add ½ pint of gravy and braise for about 3 hours, adding more gravy and basting occasionally.

  4. Strain the gravy, add a little red wine, and pour around the onions before serving.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Onions
Act as the edible vessel that holds the stuffing and softens into sweetness as it braises.
Mutton kidneys
Provide the main meaty filling, with a rich, distinct flavor that deepens during slow cooking.
Bread crumbs
Soak up cooking juices and give the stuffing a moist, tender body.
Egg yolk
Binds the stuffing so it holds together when sliced and served.
Bacon
Releases fat and savory flavor into the braising liquid and the onions.
Butter
Adds fat that helps the onions brown gently at the start of cooking.

The step that matters

Braising for about 3 hours. Long, gentle braising with occasional basting tenderizes the kidneys and onions and concentrates the gravy. Too much heat toughens the kidneys and reduces the liquid too far, leaving the stuffing dry.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, thyme, mutton, bread, parsley, egg, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, thyme, mutton, bread, parsley, egg, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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